Blog Post 1
Every day we hear the word sustainability through news, protests and articles on the internet. The entire population knows about the effects of climate change or is suffering them. But yet there is a lot of struggle in changing our mindsets and actions.
Sustainable thinking is our last resources to save the Planet in the most effective way possible. And it’s also simpler than what most people believe.
“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. This is how the Brundtland Report (1987) defined what modern society should be like.
If there is a need to cut a tree to make a notebook, then there is also the need to plant a tree to maintain a balance.
The lecture held by Kate Fletcher at LCF in February 2020, was extremely mind-opening and abundant with examples that show how, as humans, we broke our equilibrium with the Earth.
One of them was the story of Rapa Nui or Easter Island. Rapa Nui is an extremely small island 2000 miles away from the coasts of South America, mainly known for its statues named Moai. It’s believed that they were made as part of a very intricate spiritual practice that each family did. But as each family did competitively build bigger and heavier sculptures to assert dominance, those were harder and harder to carry to their final destination. As they cut down the trees to allow for an easier way to transport the figures, the soil started to blow away as there were no more roots to hold it. And as the last tree disappeared, the Island started suffering from a long period of starvation, where from 15,000 people that inhabited Rapa Nui, only 750 survived.
The history of Easter Island really made me reflect on how much we need a healthy ecosystem to survive. Overconsuming the available resources will not be sustainable in the long run, and as we are finishing them, we truly need to reorganize the system in which we live in. And as a young fashion PR student, I feel deeply involved in this. As my course is focused on learning how to communicate, I will have the power to share with a large audience a new way of thinking through Fashion. Clothes right now are very polluting, and brands should focus on more ethically sourced fabrics and highly technological fibres. Technology is going to be the main source of innovation in the next years. This September the Industry will see the first digital Fashion Week, and it could really be the future. Diminishing the footprint during Fashion Month(s) could be the first step into a new more sustainable Fashion industry. Sector by sector, in the next few years we’ll see a true ecological revolution, that could potentially change our lives.